New Features in Qt 5.9

Note: This page is work in progress and should not be considered as final list of Qt 5.9 features before the beta release.

New Features (within existing modules)

• Qt Core
  • Added new qfloat16 class.
  • QProcessEnvironment is now available on iOS, tvOS, watchOS, and VxWorks.
  • QRegularExpression now requires the PCRE2 library, at least version 10.20. Support for the PCRE1 library has been dropped. A copy of PCRE2 is shipped with Qt and will automatically be used on those platforms which lack it.

• Qt GUI
  • QPainter's GL engine is now functional with core profile OpenGL contexts as well.
  • QImage introduced reinterpretAsFormat to change format without changing data.
  • Compute shaders are now supported in QOpenGLShader and QOpenGLShaderProgram also with OpenGL ES 3.1 and newer.

• Qt QML
  • Add support for ahead-of-time generation of QML type caches

• Qt Quick
  • OpenGL shader program binaries used by QtGui (QPainter's GL paint engine) and the Qt Quick scenegraph are now cached on disk, improving application startup and view initialization times.
  • Added an OpenVG backend for Qt Quick.
  • Window-screen associations can now be made directly from QML via Window.screen and Qt.application.screens. This allows creating multi-screen aware applications for desktop and embedded without involving C++ code.
  • Added a way to query information about the font actually used to render a Text element.

• Qt Quick Controls 2
  • Introduced new QML types: DelayButton, ScrollView
  • Added multi-touch support
  • Editable ComboBox
  • Non-interactive persistent Drawer
  • Live value updates (by default) for Slider, RangeSlider, and Dial
  • Dedicated signals for notifying user interaction
    • AbstractButton::toggled(), Slider::moved(), SpinBox::valueModified(), ...
  • Incremental/discrete scrolling with ScrollBar
  • SwipeDelegate allows enabling/disabling the swipe, and opening programmatically
  • Vertical SwipeView
• Qt Widgets

• Qt WebEngine
  • Updated to Chromium 55 or 56
  • Switched internally to the new Chromium build-system GN
  • API for loading with HTTP POST

• Qt Location
  • Support for map tilting
  • Support for map rotation
  • Touch gestures for rotating and tilting the map
  • Improved support for stacking multiple Map elements
  • New element MapCopyrightNotice to flexibly position the copyrights of multiple map elements on top
  • HTML copyright can now be styled using CSS
  • Support for handing the rendering of map items to the plugin
  • New "MapboxGL" plugin, based on the mapbox-gl-native mapping engine
  • New method fitViewportToVisibleMapItems to only consider visible items when fitting the viewport
  • New element MapItemGroup, to combine multiple map items in a separate qml file
  • Added a field of view property to the Map element to control the camera's field of view when the map is tilted
  • New element MapParameter, to expose and control plugin-specific runtime functionalities
• Qt Multimedia

• Qt Network
  • Added HSTS support (HTTP Strict Transport Security) to QNetworkAccessManager
  • Added redirects policy to QNetworkAccessManager (ManulRedirectsPolicy, NoLessSafeRedirectsPolicy, SameOriginRedirectsPolicy, UserVerifiedRedirectsPolicy)

• Qt WebSockets

• Qt Charts
  • Added support for minor grid lines for logarithmic axes
  • Added options for legend marker shapes
  • Added support for more than one bar series per chart

• Qt 3D
  • Render Qt Quick 2 scenes to a texture and interact with them within 3D world
  • Technical Preview of new animation subsystem. Non-blocking, keyframe animations on the threadpool. Export from animations from Blender.
  • Physics Based Rendering (PBR) material in Qt3DExtras. Greatly improved appearance when used with environment maps.
  • 3D text support in Qt3DExtras
  • Level of Detail component allows toggling based on projected screen size or distance. Comes with convenience loader class to load different QML files for you.
  • Mesh is now plugin based. Comes with plugins for Wavefront OBJ, PLY and FBX formats. Easy to add others.
  • Distance field based 2D textured text. Can be freely rotated but is based on planar geometry.
• Qt Virtual Keyboard
  • Added support for selection handles for the dedicated (desktop) keyboard.
  • Changed behavior of shift handler to only activate caps lock if the shift key is double-clicked.
  • Added support for external keyboard layouts, which allows overriding and exclusion of the built-in keyboard layouts.
  • Added language selection popup for faster selection of input language.
  • Added support for automatic selection of the only remaining word in the suggestion list.
  • The word candidate list is now automatically hidden when inactive.
  • Added full screen input mode
• Embedded platforms
  • Added experimental DRM dumb buffer support to the linuxfb platform plugin, in order to help devices that do not support the deprecated fbdev model (or have problems with fbdev emulation).
  • The evdevtouch plugin supports filtering and prediction of touch events.

• Qt Bluetooth
  • Classic Bluetooth support for WinRT added
  • Android Peripheral support added

New Modules

• Qt Gamepad - A module to expose gamepad controller input to C++ and QML applications on a wide variety of platforms.

Platform Changes

• Deprecated WinRT on Windows 8.1

Technology Preview Modules

• Qt Remote Objects - A module that allows you to easily share QObject interfaces (Signals/Slots/Properties) between processes or devices
• Qt Network Authentication (TP2) - Provides support for OAuth1 & OAuth2

Deprecated Modules

The following modules are part of Qt 5.8 release, but deprecated and considered for removal in subsequent releases of Qt:

• Qt Script

Configurations